


Darkened

by Orange



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orange/pseuds/Orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if I have to build my own damn town, people are going to listen to me one day. (Or, In Which Karkat Vantas Transmogrifies Into A Familiar Character.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time I ever spoke to that pathetic bag of meat called John, I knew this was all going to end in tears. I just fucking knew it. 

Sure, when we lost I guess I wasn't all that phased by it like everyone else was. Why the hell should I have been? Alternia was shitty when you get right down to it. Full of horrible, bugfuck awful things that shouldn't even be. Backward ass culture full of both endless mental indulgence and idiotic rite of passage. 

So yeah, I was glad to see that place go. The saddest to see it happen were aT and gC, and she can't see shit. It may not have been what we asked for, but... fuck it. Who cares.

It was when we started hearing strange voices, like commands. That was when shit got nigh-fucking intolerable for me to deal with. First I have to play some through some horribly-coded armageddon; now I have to help somebody else play it? And what, win?

No. Fuck no. Of course not. 

And that's not even because I'm bitter. It's because that's what keeps fucking happening. No matter what I do, or how hard I try; no matter how many plate-grinding damn time hops I make to try and warn them at the right time, it never fucking works. 

So screw trying. I've seen everybody die enough times. I'm sick and tired of it. If those wastes of life want to keep looping around in time, they can.

Me? I'm going to get out of here. Start somewhere else, brand new. Make something of myself, and forget all about this damn game. Who the hell knows. Maybe one day I'll get everyone to listen to me for once.


	2. Chapter 2

** CG: ALRIGHT, LISTEN. I'M ONLY GOING TO ASK THIS ONCE, AND IT WILL BE THE ONLY TIME I ASK NICELY.  
TA: what do you even want from me?  
TA: you've already gone and me22ed everything up liike 2wice now  
TA: what more could you po22iibly want?  
CG: I SAID LISTEN YOU PSEUDOPRETENTIOUS PLATEFUCKER.  
TA: alriight ii suppo2e ii wiill.  
TA: why the hell not  
TA: ii'm so damn 2en2iitiive after all  
CG: YOU.  
CG: SHUT THE FUCK UP.  
CG: RIGHT NOW.  
CG: I'M BEING SERIOUS.  
CG: MY POTENTIAL TO EVEN BE POLITE IS WANING LIKE THE DAMN MOON.  
TA: fiine.  
CG: GOD DAMN IT, THANK YOU.   
CG: I NEED YOU TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME.  
CG: IT LITERALLY HAS TO BE DONE, OR WHAT I HAVE IN MIND HAS NO CHANCE IN FUCKING HELL OF WORKING.  
CG: AND YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I KNOW WHO CAN DO IT.  
TA: ii'm lii2teniing.  
CG: I NEED YOU TO WRITE A PROGRAM FOR ME.  
CG: I'M THE ONE THAT DID ALL THAT DROOLBABY CREATIONIST BULLSHIT THAT APPARENTLY GOT US TO EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.  
CG: BUT IF I DIE IN THE PROCESS OF WHAT I'M GOING TO DO, THEN I WON'T BE AROUND BACK THEN TO DO WHAT I DID TO ARGH FUCK YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.  
CG: LONG STORY SHORT, I NEED YOU TO WRITE A PROGRAM THAT WILL PUT ME BACK AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS TIMELINE AS SOON AS I DIE.  
TA: waiit what? that2 not goiing to be happeniing anytiime 2oon.   
TA: what2 left to kiill you?  
CG: WHEN I SHORTEN A LONG STORY, BELIEVE ME, IT'S FOR YOUR BENEFIT.  
TA: 2o when doe2 thii2 2criipt need to be wriitten then?  
CG: NOW.  
TA: are you 2eriious? ii don't have the damn tiime.  
CG: YES YOU DO.  
CG: WE BOTH KNOW YOU HAVE ALL THE DAMN TIME YOU WANT.  
CG: LOOK.  
CG: JUST TRUST ME, THIS MIGHT GET US OUT OF THIS SUPERMASSIVE DWARF STAR CLUSTERFUCK SINGULARITY WE'VE MIRACULOUSLY ACHIEVED.  
CG: WHAT THE HELL DO YOU EVEN HAVE TO LOSE BY DOING THIS?  
CG: I WON'T EVEN BE AROUND TO ANNOY YOU.  
CG: IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING WIN-WIN FOR YOU.  
TA: YEAH.  
TA: TOTALLY NEED ANOTHER DEAD FRIIEND RIIGHT NOW.  
TA: 2eriiou2ly ii don't under2tand what the fuck you're tryiing at here.  
CG: JUST FUCKING DO IT, MAN.  
CG: JUST... DO IT FOR ME.  
CG: AND THEN I'LL BE BACK. TECHNICALLY, ANYWAY.  
TA: waiit no you're not gettiing away wiith thii2 2hiit agaiin.  
carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  **  
  
Karkat didn't really need anything else for what he was about to do. His modus proved pretty dysfunctional, so he wasn't going to take anything with him. All he needed was his stupid damn sickle, and that he could just hold onto.  
  
He had found that, over the course of the past year or so, there was something that continuously bothered him. Some nagging feeling that all of the problems he had stemmed from something he had yet to do. He had always had the feeling that it was some kind of low self-esteem bullshit.  
  
Then the vomit-inducing coincidence that the game he and his friends played allowed for all this stupid time hopping bullshit even AFTER the game was finished just settled it for him: his luck wasn't just naturally shitty. Something he had yet to do in his future, something he will have done later on down the road, however you want to proverbially slice the metaphorical sopor slime pie chart that is his LIFE. Something he hadn't yet done made everything he ever did suck.  
  
So now, as he walks out into the barren, technicolor hell of a desert that was once his home planet, he hopes to find out what the fuck it will be.


	3. Chapter 3

Years in the future.

Oh so many.

The sun doesn't just beat down on horrible places like the Alternian Desert. It does an acrobatic fucking body slam down upon it, burning everything in that barren wasteland to a horrible, blacker than pitch pile of ash and dust.

Unless you just refuse to die. Unless your skin just hardens under the sun's rays like blowing glass. And that's exactly what it felt like: as if some quintuple-lunged demi-bastard was blowing volcanic fucking fumes under your skin. You look for all the world like a scarab beetle. If that beetle were buried under charcoal.

It burns everything.

The skin was just the start of the whole damn thing. There used to be horns on your head. You don't really remember why. They were small, and after a few months of their absence the skin had simply smoothed over. It feels like glass now. Like a diamond-hard carapace.

And when you talk to yourself, you don't really call yourself by your own name. It's fucking silly. You know your own name. Until the brain-frying ball of fire takes that to and all you're left with is horribly boring conversations. You just start inventing things.

Things you want so bad to be real. And you've got nothing else to want. You've got no goal to work toward. So you start believing in the things you think up. 

You believe in it so hard that you start seeing it like it was real. You don't dare go near it, don't dare touch it; you don't dare prove to yourself that it's a mirage. Because in the back of your skull, you ever so slightly give in to the possibility that your carefully manufactured reality might be make-believe.

Until you just don't give a damn anymore. 

Until you're tired of dealing with the universe's shit. Tired being the universe's shit.

And you remember what you wanted so much. You remember that you wanted to be listened to. You wanted to rule.

And it comes back to you, from somewhere deep in your memories, when you were young. When everything looked so alien compared to the endless, washed-out rainbow colored desert you've been living in. You remember what you promised to yourself.

And your voice comes out like crude oil, like slick gravel. It comes out of your mouth, escorted by a cloud of dust from disuse. 

"Even if I have to build my own damn town, people are going to listen to me."

There's no one to listen to you.

"Even if I have to make people to listen, they are going to."

You can't do anything. You're nobody.

"I DON'T HAVE TO BE," you scream. Your throat feels like crumpled paper, if crumpled paper could bleed profusely. Nothing makes sense. Everything can though, can't it? Because who's going to argue? 

"I don't have to be anybody. Because I'm all that's left."

You want it so bad. And you focus on it, solely on your singular desire, and the sand erupts around you. It shapes itself into a sprawling metropolis, with you at the center. And one day, when you've put people into it, they're going to listen to you. They'll have to.

"I'm everybody."


	4. Chapter 4

Slowly, but surely, something begins to dawn upon you.

It is the horrifying, soul-crushing fact that everything you have done up to this point was a colossal fucking waste of time. 

It's pitch black now. Your comrades are all either dead or MIA, and fraknly you don't really give a damn. If someone asked you if you needed oxygen to breathe, you'd probably tell them to fuck off. If pressured, you'd probably say it was a nice luxury that you had grown accustomed to.

But frankly you're all out of luxuries. You're not in any position to be breathing right now. You are probably breaking yet another law by even being alive. Even for someone like Spades Slick there are rules to follow.

Sadly you can't flip the universe two birds, so it'll have to settle for a pissed off-patridge and a bloody stump.

Then, just barely, you see something light up at the end of the vault: some whirling fucking laser-show, occupying a small spot on the wall. "Well fuck me," you think. "We've got ourselves a god damn rock concert."

Somewhere in your head it occurs to you that what you have on your hands is a barcode scanner, like the kind they pass your groceries across whenever you-- oh wait, you don't buy shit from grocery stores.

You figure you could probably use those Blackjack Rules right about now. It'd probably help open the door in the floor. But then, how the hell do you know it's a door? 

Thankfully you've got the arm that has the damn barcode on it. You forget how you got it. You keep forgetting that trite little piece of trivia, which means you never win when it comes time to play Trivial Pursuit: Spades Slick edition. Basically what you're saying, to yourself, is that you can't remember Jack shit about it.

You wave your arm across the scanner, and it opens. Well would you look at that? Something in the back of your thoughts tells you to shut up and get on with it, so you do. The door leads to a ladder, which leads down to a room, in which there is a computer.

And you know fuck all about computers.

But on the screen-- one of twelve-- is a wimpy looking pale kid. Except he's not so wimpy looking, and you don't know why you expected him to be. One of his horns has been sheared short, and he's clad in dark, obsidian armor. He's got a little sickle, but it's not little at all; it's more like some kind of scimitar dripping with ichor the color of-- well, blackness.

And he's looking directly at the screen. Him and his freaky-as-shit floaty crab bastard. It looks for all the world like he's staring right down into you. And when he opens his mouth, you know who he's talking to.

"Guess what, fuckass. You've blown it all over again."

The anger that wells up to the surface, hearing that voice, your voice, is so intense that you almost break the damn screen with your good arm's fist. The kid-- YOU starts screaming at you, and that is the last straw.

Except it's not. Not because it can't be, not because you have an endless amount of straws, but because someone else wants to claim it. And that someone steps out of the shadows to make their best attempt at doing so.

"Don't. I guarantee that'll just make your life worse. This life and that one."

You whip around, already about to bum-rush whoever the voice belongs to, but when you see him--

When you see it-- Everything drains out of you. Anger, rage, and black, black sorrow. Nothing compares to this.

Your voice is coming from someone who looks exactly like you do.

"Yeah, you're attempt number two. And now you're going to help me fix this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised batshit crazy. Karkat = Jack = Spades = Karkat! I think that qualifies. Just, y'know. Not in the awesome way I intended.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as a one-shot for the "Vol 5 Fanstraviganza", an attempt to make at least one drabble-length fic per song on Volume 5. Then I ended up with more ideas as to what I should do with this little story, and... it sort of spiraled out from there. Prepare for batshit insane non-canon beyond this point!


End file.
